The Archive Projecthttp://www.literary-arts.org/archives
In partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Literary Arts is building a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 30 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland.Sun, 15 Sep 2019 02:37:16 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.2In partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Literary Arts is building a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 30 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland. In conjunction with our 30th anniversary, Literary Arts is rolling out an archive of the most sought-after talks from our lecture series. Each month, we’ll be publishing new lectures available for streaming on this website for free. With over 250 original lectures by the most creative and articulate minds of our generation, these discussions offer special moments between world-famous authors and our local literary community.Literary ArtsLiterary Artsla@literary-arts.orgla@literary-arts.org (Literary Arts)A retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world’s best writers over the first 30 years of Portland Arts & Lectures in Portland.The Archive Projecthttp://www.literary-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/unnamed-3.jpghttp://www.literary-arts.org/archives
Portland, OregonBarry Lopez (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-rebroadcast/
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 19:52:27 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=36248https://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-rebroadcast/">Barry Lopez (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, we hear one of Oregon’s most celebrated authors, Barry Lopez, discuss his latest book of nonfiction called Horizon with Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts. The two discuss the themes behind his book, including the environmental crisis at hand. Pulling from 30 years of lived experience, Horizon defies category. It is not merely travel, science, or nature writing. It is not only a memoir, or a book of natural history. Within the book’s nearly 600 pages, Lopez explores the six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez probes the long history of humanity’s quests and explorations. This work challenges Lopez to answer his own question: “Having seen so many parts of the world, what had I learned about human menace, human triumph, and human failure?” Lopez reads passages from the book while also weaving anecdotes about his decades of fieldwork. He leaves us with an urgent call to take ownership of the health and the future of our world and its inhabitants.

Barry Lopez is the author of Arctic Dreams, for which he received a National Book Award and an Oregon Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist; and eight works of fiction, including Light Action in the Caribbean and Resistance, which also won Oregon Book Awards.

]]>National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.Literary Arts1:03:25Verselandia! 2018 (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018-rebroadcast/
Wed, 04 Sep 2019 17:32:09 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=35908https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018-rebroadcast/">Verselandia! 2018 (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode of The Archive Project, we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during the seventh annual Verselandia! poetry slam. This city-wide event features students from Parkrose, Roosevelt, Metropolitan Learning Center, Benson, Lincoln, Gresham, Sam Barlow, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Jefferson, Grant, and Cleveland high schools competing for poetic glory. Verselandia! is the Grand Slam for the winners from individual school slams hosted by public high school library media specialists. This episode features a small selection of performances from the 2018 competition, emceed by Portland’s own Anis Mojgani.

Anis Mojgani is the author of five books of poetry. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in journals Bat City Review, Rattle, Buzzfeed Reader, Thrush, and Forklift Ohio, amongst others. A two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis has done commissioned work for the Getty Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Portland Timbers, and has been awarded artist residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, AIR Serenbe, and the Bloedel Nature Reserve. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland, OR, where he serves on the Board of Directors for Literary Arts. His latest book is In the Pockets of Small Gods. Visit him online at thepianofarm.com.

]]>Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.Literary Arts50:38Mitchell Jackson & Jesmyn Ward (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward-rebroadcast/
Wed, 04 Sep 2019 17:30:17 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=35906https://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward-rebroadcast/">Mitchell Jackson & Jesmyn Ward (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Jesmyn Ward is the author of the National Book Award-winning novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Men We Reaped. Ward is in conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson, Whiting Award-winner, native Portlander, and author of the novel The Residue Years and nonfiction book Survival Math (forthcoming 2019). Both Ward and Jackson address the uncomfortable realities of the black experience in America in their work. In this conversation between real-life friends and colleagues, Ward and Jackson seriously discuss the issues of systemic racism, poverty, and violence that are central to their works. Despite the weight of these topics, the intimacy and comfort between the authors creates a light and even humorous discussion. In this episode, Ward and Jackson invite us not only to think, but to laugh with them as well.

Jesmyn Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner, a MacArthur Genius, and a recipient of the Strauss Living Award. She is the author of Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, Men We Reaped, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, and editor of The Fire This Time. She teaches creative writing at Tulane University.

Whiting Award winner Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from Lannan Foundation, Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, NYFA, and The Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Tin House. His newest is the nonfiction book Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of writing in Liberal Studies at New York University.

]]>Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency.Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency.Literary Arts55:52W.S. Merwin (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin-rebroadcast/
Thu, 22 Aug 2019 16:38:14 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=35505https://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin-rebroadcast/">W.S. Merwin (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, we honor two-time United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner W.S. Merwin. In November of 2008, Merwin joined Literary Arts downtown in the Newmark Theatre for an intimate Q&A session, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration. The collection features a combination of new poems and selected favorites from the course of his lengthy and prolific career. In a New York Times review of the book, Don Chiasson wrote that Merwin’s poetry “implies something above or below ordinary speech: the hum of deep interiority, a chorus of ancestral voices, the music of the spheres.” It was Merwin’s ability to blend this kind of secular spirituality with the political that made him much beloved among literary lovers and critics alike. His keen ear for language allowed him to epitomize and transcend the issues he tackled, among them the Vietnam War and environmentalism, with heart-wrenching elegance. Merwin’s passion for the environment in particular colored his later work. When asked about the role of the poet in society, Merwin replied, “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you?”

After over a half-century of award-winning literary and civic contributions, W.S. Merwin passed away on March 15, 2019, at the age of 91.

Born September 30, 1927, in New York City, William Stanley Merwin was the son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five. He was raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and attended Princeton University on a scholarship. As a young man, Merwin went to Europe and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal to a more distinctly American voice. Merwin was perhaps the most highly decorated poet in American history, with two Pulitzer Prizes, and National Book Award, and two terms as United States Poet Laureate, among many other honors. As the Atlantic Monthly says, “The intentions of Merwin’s poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.”

He lived in Majorca, London, France and Mexico and several places in the United States, including Boston and New York. In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, a Zen Buddhist teacher. He married Paula Dunaway, in 1983, and settled on Maui. For nearly 30 years, they lived in a home that he designed and helped build, surrounded by acres of land once devastated and depleted from years of erosion, logging, and toxic agricultural practices. Merwin painstakingly restored the land into one of the most comprehensive palm forests in the world. He passed away on March 15 in his home at the age of 91. [Bio courtesy of merwinconservancy.org]

]]>W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration.W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration.Literary Arts55:35Jennifer Egan (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan-rebroadcast/
Thu, 22 Aug 2019 16:37:32 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=35504https://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan-rebroadcast/">Jennifer Egan (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan joins us in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for a lecture on the journey to her New York Times best seller Manhattan Beach. In her own words, Egan takes us through her research process for the novel—from the initial spark of intrigue and inspiration, through the many stories she uncovered along the way, and finally to the relationships she was able to foster and channel into the final product.

About the book: Manhattan Beach (2017) is set in a World War II–era New York City populated by gangsters, sailors, bankers, union men, and the divers of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The novel tells the haunting and propulsive intertwined stories of heroine Anna Kerrigan, the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s only female diver, her father Eddie Kerrigan, who works for both the union and the mob, and nightclub owner Dexter Styles, Eddie’s complex and charismatic boss. Egan has said of writing Manhattan Beach: “It was incredibly fun to just go there with this stuff, in the manner of Robinson Crusoe or Mutiny on the Bounty, these stories that I loved as a kid. It was just incredibly fun to write a shipwreck, and a survival-at-sea story about mobsters trying to kill each other. That felt different.” The book was awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Jennifer Egan is the author of Manhattan Beach, the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Of her writing, George Saunders has said: “To see the world through Egan’s eyes is to be moved, through language, to new adoration of the world. I don’t know a better writer working today. There is a generosity in her prose that is vastly enlivening to its reader and brings about that beautiful effect fiction sometimes causes: more, and better-grounded, fondness for reality, just as it is.” For more information on this speaker, please visit prhspeakers.com

]]>In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.Literary Arts52:00Toni Morrisonhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/toni-morrison-2/
Wed, 07 Aug 2019 22:21:31 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=34849https://literary-arts.org/archive/toni-morrison-2/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/toni-morrison-2/feed/0<p>Toni Morrison discusses how her work—specifically in her novels Beloved and Jazz—examines the evolution of racial self-regard in African Americans. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/toni-morrison-2/">Toni Morrison</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Toni Morrison begins her lecture by saying she wants to discuss two of her books in particular—Beloved (1987) and Jazz (still forthcoming at the time)—and the progression of her writing. She considers the impact of history on both novels. In discussing Beloved, Morrison touches on the pornography of writing about violence as a voyeur and how she worked to keep the focus on the characters themselves, not the institution of slavery. For Jazz, Morrison discusses the genre’s contradictions, its place in the cultural psyche, and how the Jazz Age “was a period when black people placed an indelible hand of agency on the cultural scene.” All of this, she says, was part of her sustained investigation of “self-regard, in both racial and gendered terms.” Morrison also discusses the interior, imaginative freedom that jazz fostered and how this agency changed the course of cultural history in America.

Toni Morrison was born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She was an avid reader, and her favorite authors included Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison attended Howard University and wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, while teaching there and raising two children. She went on to become the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sula, Song of Solomon, Jazz, and Home. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Beloved, and in 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years. In 1993, Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her most recent book, The Source of Self-Regard: Essays, Speeches, Meditations, was published in February of 2019. Morrison passed away in August of 2019.

The embrace of history and fiction is what I was concerned with—or rather, the effort to disentangle the grip of history, while remaining in its palm, so to speak.

We move from data to information, to knowledge, to wisdom. And separating one from the other, being able to distinguish among and between them, that is knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the others, while respecting each category of intelligence. That’s generally what serious education is about.

It’s impossible to hear that sort of blues cry without acknowledging in it the defiance, the grandeur, the agency that frequently belies the wale of disappointed love. And it may be through that agency—and the even more powerful assertiveness of what we call Jazz, which uses those gestures—that is how compromise becomes reconciliation. It’s also the way in which imagination fosters real possibilities. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it.

]]>Toni Morrison discusses how her work—specifically in her novels Beloved and Jazz—examines the evolution of racial self-regard in African Americans.Toni Morrison discusses how her work—specifically in her novels Beloved and Jazz—examines the evolution of racial self-regard in African Americans.Literary Arts52:23Martín Espada (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada-rebroadcast/
Wed, 24 Jul 2019 21:49:49 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=34402https://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada-rebroadcast/">Martín Espada (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode of The Archive Project, American Book Award winning poet Martín Espada discusses his then most poetry collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. In this, his sixth collection, Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the “Mayan astronomer” calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda. In many ways, the collection mirrors Espada’s own career: a winding, fascinating journey punctuated by episodes that on their surface could not appear to have less in common. Espada has worn many hats—civil rights lawyer, teacher, poet—and this is evident in the various people, places, and themes his work tackles.

As a courtesy, we warn that this episode contains sometimes graphic descriptions of violence and racism, and may not be suitable for all audiences.

​Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published almost twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest collection of poems from Norton is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). Other books of poems include The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (2000), Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993) and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (1990). His many honors include the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, an American Book Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona, and has been issued in a new edition by Northwestern University Press. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

]]>Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen.Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen.Literary Arts56:26Tayari Jones (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones-rebroadcast/
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 00:38:40 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=34334https://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones-rebroadcast/">Tayari Jones (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this humorous and personal lecture, author Tayari Jones discusses her complex journey to literary success, and her newest novel, An American Marriage. She describes the path her career has taken, from childhood to university and beyond, in which she’s made decisions to pursue writing despite receiving varying levels of support from educators, family, and the publishing industry. She finishes the talk by sharing a short selection from An American Marriage.

An American Marriage is a stirring love story and a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. A masterpiece of storytelling, it’s an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

“For me, the novel lives in the place of moral ambiguity. And moral ambiguity happens when there’s a conflict and the people don’t agree, but nobody’s wrong.”

“I got all the way to about fifty pages from the end, and I hit a wall. I couldn’t figure out how to end the book. It was stressful. It was as though me and this book were in a relationship in New York City…we had broken up, but we couldn’t afford to move out. I felt like the book was sleeping on my couch. I would wake up in the morning: there’s the book. It’s not speaking to me, I’m not speaking to it. I can’t bring any new books home because this book is on my couch. And it went like this for a year.”

New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, the New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

]]>Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.Literary Arts49:07Barbara Kingsolver (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/barbara-kingsolver-rebroadcast/
Wed, 10 Jul 2019 22:30:43 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=34264https://literary-arts.org/archive/barbara-kingsolver-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/barbara-kingsolver-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Barbara Kingsolver, author of bestselling the novel The Poisonwood Bible and Animal Dreams, discusses her then most recent novel Flight Behavior as well as her career up to that point.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/barbara-kingsolver-rebroadcast/">Barbara Kingsolver (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>This episode of The Archive Project features bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist Barbara Kingsolver discussing her then most recent novel Flight Behavior. The novel is a heady exploration of climate change, along with media exploitation and political opportunism that lie at the root of what may be our most urgent modern dilemma. Set in Appalachia, a region to which Kingsolver has returned often in both her acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, its suspenseful narrative traces the unforeseen impact of global concerns on the ordinary citizens of a rural community. As environmental, economic, and political issues converge, the residents of Feathertown, Tennessee, are forced to come to terms with their changing place in the larger world. [Book description courtesy of Kingsolver.com]

Kingsolver is writer who has never shied away from the political, who embraces the inherent presence of the political in all artistic creation. In this interview, Kingsolver discusses her belief in the power of art for change and the distinctly American myth of apolitical art.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling works of fiction, including the novels, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the enormously influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the prestigious Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her body of work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia. [Bio courtesy of HarperCollins]

]]>Barbara Kingsolver, author of bestselling the novel The Poisonwood Bible and Animal Dreams, discusses her then most recent novel Flight Behavior as well as her career up to that point.Barbara Kingsolver, author of bestselling the novel The Poisonwood Bible and Animal Dreams, discusses her then most recent novel Flight Behavior as well as her career up to that point.Literary Arts50:37John Updike (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/john-updike-rebroadcast-2/
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 19:40:08 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=34187https://literary-arts.org/archive/john-updike-rebroadcast-2/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/john-updike-rebroadcast-2/feed/0<p>In 1988, John Updike reads from various works, including poems and an essay, and discusses his then 35-year career in this rare recording. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/john-updike-rebroadcast-2/">John Updike (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this rare, vintage recording from the Literary Arts archive, world-renowned author, poet, and essayist John Updike reads from various poems as well as an essay at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the fall of 1988. Updike reads from his essay, “Getting the Words Out,” which meditates on his lifelong struggle with stuttering, as well as the nature of speech and communication. With sparkling, self-effacing humor, Updike gives us a doorway into his childhood eccentricities and the ways in which they manifested later in both his public and private life.

Updike agreed to only a small number of speaking engagements, and even fewer of these have been recorded. This rarity, coupled with Updike’s candor and wit, makes for a truly remarkable listening experience.

Poet, essayist, short-story writer, critic, and novelist John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932. His father taught high school math, and his mother wrote short stories and novels. Updike received his BA from Harvard University in 1954, the year he began to publish in The New Yorker.

Updike is the author of more than fifty books. Among his volumes of poetry are Americana and Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), Collected Poems 1953-1993 (1993), Facing Nature (1985), Tossing and Turning (1977), Seventy Poems (1972), Midpoint and Other Poems (1969), and The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures (1958).

His novels and short-story collections include Toward the End of Time (1997), The Afterlife and Other Stories (1994), Problems and Other Stories (1981), Marry Me (1976), Rabbit Redux (1971), and Couples (1968).

Updike received numerous honors and awards including the National Book Award, American Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and a National Arts Club Medal of Honor. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for Rabbit is Rich and another Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for Rabbit at Rest.

John Updike passed away due to complications of lung cancer on January 27, 2009. [Bio courtesy of the Academy of American Poets.]

]]>In 1988, John Updike reads from various works, including poems and an essay, and discusses his then 35-year career in this rare recording.In 1988, John Updike reads from various works, including poems and an essay, and discusses his then 35-year career in this rare recording.Literary Arts53:25DeRay Mckesson (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/deray-mckesson-rebroadcast/
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:20:42 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33899https://literary-arts.org/archive/deray-mckesson-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/deray-mckesson-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Internationally recognized civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson joins Literary Arts in Portland to celebrate the publication of his book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/deray-mckesson-rebroadcast/">DeRay Mckesson (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson engages the Portland community in a timely conversation on culture, social justice, and politics. Drawing from his own experiences as an organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson explores the issues of the day and discusses the subtle structures and inherent biases that impact our communities. The conversation examines the core themes of Mckesson’s upcoming first book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of the Black Lives Matter movement from the front lines. Honest, courageous, and imaginative, On the Other Side of Freedom is a work brimming with hope. Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible.Mckesson delivers a keynote about inclusion, community, and progress, followed by an onstage conversation with Lauretta Charlton, Editor of Race/Related at theNew York Times.

“Any call for peace that’s not rooted in a demand for justice was something we didn’t want. We knew that the freedom that our lives deserve would never be rooted in something as basic as order and compliance, and we knew that a call for peace in the absence of justice was just a call for order and compliance. What we knew to be true then, we know to be true now: no justice, no peace.”

DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist, community organizer, and the host of Crooked Media’s podcast, Pod Save the People. He started his career as an educator and came to prominence for his role in documenting the Ferguson protests and the movement they birthed and for publicly advocating for justice and accountability for the victims of police violence and the end of mass incarceration. He’s spoken at venues from the White House to the Oxford Union and universities and appeared on TV shows across the political spectrum. He was named #11 on Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list and Harvard’s Black Man of the Year in 2016, among his many other accolades. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence, he lives in Baltimore, Maryland. On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope is his first book.

]]>Internationally recognized civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson joins Literary Arts in Portland to celebrate the publication of his book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.Internationally recognized civil rights leader DeRay Mckesson joins Literary Arts in Portland to celebrate the publication of his book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.Literary Arts1:03:34Jill Lepore (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/jill-lepore-rebroadcast/
Fri, 14 Jun 2019 23:02:38 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33782https://literary-arts.org/archive/jill-lepore-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jill-lepore-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses the central ideas in her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/jill-lepore-rebroadcast/">Jill Lepore (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, Harvard professor, staff writer at The New Yorker, and New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses her newest work, These Truths: A History of the United States. Cited as the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—”these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?

We can’t unlock the prison of the present without having a much longer view of American history.”

“We are all broadcasting, but no one is really listening. In fact, it’s impossible to listen carefully.”

Jill Lepore has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005. Her books include The Name of War, which won the Bancroft Prize; New York Burning, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history; The Story of America, which was short-listed for the pen Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States, came out in September 2018. Lepore received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995 and is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. In 2012, she was named a Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching. [Lepore bio courtesy of The New Yorker]

]]>New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses the central ideas in her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States.New York Times bestselling author Jill Lepore discusses the central ideas in her latest book, These Truths: A History of the United States.Literary Arts51:32David Wolman & Julian Smithhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/david-wolman-julian-smith/
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:11:18 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33659https://literary-arts.org/archive/david-wolman-julian-smith/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/david-wolman-julian-smith/feed/0<p>David Wolman and Julian Smith discuss their book, Aloha Rodeo, which spotlights Hawaiian cowboys and a hidden gem from Western America’s history.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/david-wolman-julian-smith/">David Wolman & Julian Smith</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Portland-based journalists and researchers, David Wolman and Julian Smith, discuss their new nonfiction book Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West. Aloha Rodeo brings to light the story of how, in 1908, three of Hawaii’s most revered paniolo (cowboys) journeyed 4,000 miles to Wyoming to compete in the world’s greatest rodeo, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and returned home champions and American legends. Wolman and Smith were interviewed by Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts, in a live event at Powell’s Books. In their discussion, we hear about Hawaii’s cattle wrangling history, the islands’ vibrant culture and industry, and explore why this incredible story has been left out of mainstream American history and the importance of sharing it now.

“It’s always the time to reveal hidden stories or stories that have been lost to people. And now more than ever I think we need these kinds of stories because of the very plain truth that diversity makes us better and makes our stories better.”

“The thing that we really hope people come away with is the idea that history is a lot more complex than we usually think. In the narrative of the American West—and Hawaii, too—it’s natural to want to simplify these stories. Clear good guys, clear bad guys, a certain string of events. But once you start digging into it, you find how much more complex and rich it is.”

David Wolman is a Contributing Editor at Outside and a longtime contributor at Wired. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Nature, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. David is the author of The End of Money, Righting the Mother Tongue, and A Left-Hand Turn Around the World. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

Julian Smith writes about science, adventure, and history for Smithsonian, Wired, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler, The Washington Post, and other publications. He is the author of Crossing the Heart of Africa, which won the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award and a Banff Mountain Book Award, and is the coauthor of Smokejumper. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

]]>David Wolman and Julian Smith discuss their book, Aloha Rodeo, which spotlights Hawaiian cowboys and a hidden gem from Western America’s history.David Wolman and Julian Smith discuss their book, Aloha Rodeo, which spotlights Hawaiian cowboys and a hidden gem from Western America’s history.Literary Arts50:54Poets on Broadwayhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/poets-on-broadway/
Wed, 29 May 2019 19:05:45 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33564https://literary-arts.org/archive/poets-on-broadway/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/poets-on-broadway/feed/0<p>Poets Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong perform poems and discuss their work, from Literary Arts’s Poets on Broadway series.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/poets-on-broadway/">Poets on Broadway</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Three contemporary poets—Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong—share their poetry and discuss their work and inspirations. In 2018, Literary Arts hosted a free reading series called Poets on Broadway, in collaboration with Portland’5 Centers for the Arts, in the Antoinette Hatfield Hall in downtown Portland. This episode features recordings from those events, with Lawson sharing selections from her book of poetry I Think I’m Ready to Meet Frank Ocean, Adams-Santos from Swarm Queen’s Crown, and Wong from Overpour.

Shayla Lawson is the author of three books of poetry—A Speed Education in Human Being, the chapbook PANTONE, AND I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean—and the forthcoming essay collection MAJOR: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, & Being Dope {AF} (Harper Perennial, 2020). Her work has appeared in print and online at Tin House, GRAMMA, ESPN, Salon, The Offing, Guernica, Colorado Review, Barrelhouse, and MiPOesias. She curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Lawson currently serves as Writer-in-Residence and Chair of Creative Writing at Amherst College.

Stephanie Adams-Santos is a multidisciplinary Guatemalan-American writer and educator whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and hybrid genres. Her full-length poetry collection, Swarm Queen’s Crown (Fathom Books, 2016) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates excellence in LGBTQ voices. She is also the author of Total Memory, Little Fugues, and the award-winning chapbook The Sundering, selected for a New York Chapbook Fellowship. Stephanie has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and was a finalist for a Corporeal Voices fellowship for Writers of Color. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals and magazines, including Guernica, The Boston Review, Orion Magazine, and others.

Jane Wong is the author of Overpour and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021). Wong’s poems can be found in places such as Best American Poetry 2015, American Poetry Review, POETRY, AGNI, Third Coast, New England Review, and others. Her essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Willapa Bay AiR, Hedgebrook, the Jentel Foundation, SAFTA, and Mineral School.

]]>Poets Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong perform poems and discuss their work, from Literary Arts’s Poets on Broadway series.Poets Shayla Lawson, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Jane Wong perform poems and discuss their work, from Literary Arts’s Poets on Broadway series.Literary Arts50:15Joan Didionhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/joan-didion-2/
Wed, 22 May 2019 19:22:51 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33454https://literary-arts.org/archive/joan-didion-2/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/joan-didion-2/feed/0<p>Joan Didion reads from her book Political Fictions that focus on her experience observing and participating in the American political process.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/joan-didion-2/">Joan Didion</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Joan Didion, a prominent writer within the New Journalism movement, reads from her newest book at the time, Political Fictions, selecting excerpts that focus on her experience observing and participating in the American political process. Following this, David Sarasohn, then Associate Editor for The Oregonian, joins her for an onstage interview. Their discussion centers on Didion’s essays exposing the backstage of American politics.

I have a strong sense that we better start noticing the rest of the world.

American novelist and essayist Joan Didion began her writing career working for Vogue magazine from 1956 to 1963, first as a copywriter and later as an editor. During this period, she also wrote her first novel, Run River (1963), which examines the disintegration of a California family. While in New York City, she met and married writer John Gregory Dunne, with whom she returned to California in 1964. A collection of magazine columns published as Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) established Didion’s reputation as an essayist and confirmed her preoccupation with the forces of disorder. Other works by Didion include the short novels Play It as It Lays (1970), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996), and the essays Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), and Where I Was From (2003). Essays on U.S. politics, including the presidential election of 2000, were collected in Political Fictions (2001). Didion also wrote several screenplays with her husband. Following Dunne’s death in 2003, she wrote The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), in which she recounted their marriage and mourned his passing. The memoir won a National Book Award, and Didion adapted it for the stage in 2007. In 2011, she again visited tragedy and loss in Blue Nights, a memoir in which she attempts to come to terms with the death of her daughter. In 2013, Didion was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Obama, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

]]>Joan Didion reads from her book Political Fictions that focus on her experience observing and participating in the American political process.Joan Didion reads from her book Political Fictions that focus on her experience observing and participating in the American political process.Literary Arts51:14Marissa Meyer & Tochi Onyebuchihttps://literary-arts.org/archive/marissa-meyer-tochi-onyebuchi/
Wed, 15 May 2019 23:54:19 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33335https://literary-arts.org/archive/marissa-meyer-tochi-onyebuchi/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/marissa-meyer-tochi-onyebuchi/feed/0<p>A discussion between Young Adult authors Marissa Meyer and Tochi Onyebuchi at the 2018 Portland Book Festival, moderated by Alicia Tate.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/marissa-meyer-tochi-onyebuchi/">Marissa Meyer & Tochi Onyebuchi</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Deadly Magic: Vengeance, Justice, and Destiny – a discussion on fantasy writing and craft from the 2018 Portland Book Festival. Secrets, magic, and extraordinary powers run through two fantastical YA series. Marissa Meyer, author of the Lunar Chronicles, presents a new world in the Renegades series. Book two, Archenemies, finds Nova, our heroine, confronted with the possible destruction of Gatlon City and the world as she knows it. In Tochi Onyebuchi’s debut series, Beasts Made of Night, a young man, Taj, finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy. The sequel,Crown of Thunder, has Taj on the run and questioning his true identity. Moderated by Alicia Tate of Multnomah County Library.

“I would read a lot of science fiction and fantasy growing up, but I didn’t see anybody who looked like me having these adventures, or falling in love, or saving the day. And to be able to see that in a book now, I think, is part of that relief [found in reading fantasy]. Because you’re living in this world that’s taking every opportunity to tell you that you don’t matter, but then you can crack open this book and you can see that you’re the love interest, like somebody who looks like you is the love interest, somebody who looks like you is the hero. That’s a very important element [of writing] for me.” – Onyebuchi

Marissa Meyer is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lunar Chronicles series, as well as the Wires and Nerve graphic novels and The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book. Her first stand-alone novel, Heartless, was also a #1 New York Times bestseller. She visited the Portland Book Festival with Archenemies, the fiercely awaited second installment of her Renegade Trilogy, after the New York Times-bestselling Renegades.

Tochi Onyebuchi holds a BA from Yale, an MFA in screenwriting from Tisch, a master’s degree in global economic law from L’institut d’études politiques, and a JD from Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ideomancer, among other places. His most recent book is Crown of Thunder (Beasts Made of Night #2). Tochi resides in Connecticut, where he works in the tech industry.

Alicia Tate is a Multnomah County librarian with a focus on teen librarianship. Alicia graduated from the Information School at the University of Washington. As a member of the My Librarian service at the Multnomah County Library, she offers reading recommendations focused on YA fiction and graphic novels, especially in the genres of horror and scientific fiction.

]]>A discussion between Young Adult authors Marissa Meyer and Tochi Onyebuchi at the 2018 Portland Book Festival, moderated by Alicia Tate.A discussion between Young Adult authors Marissa Meyer and Tochi Onyebuchi at the 2018 Portland Book Festival, moderated by Alicia Tate.Literary Arts53:08Amos Ozhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/amos-oz-2/
Wed, 08 May 2019 21:33:23 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33203https://literary-arts.org/archive/amos-oz-2/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/amos-oz-2/feed/0<p>Novelist, journalist, and intellectual Amos Oz discusses Israeli literature, Hebrew, the Holocaust, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/amos-oz-2/">Amos Oz</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Israeli writer Amos Oz discusses Israeli Literature, Hebrew as a spoken and written language, the influence of the Holocaust on literature, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

I love Israel, even at times that I don’t like it. In fact, I love Israel even at times that I cannot stand it. And Israel, as I’m sure you know, ladies and gentlemen, Israel is neither a country, nor a nation. Actually, it is a fiery collection of arguments. A noisy assembly of 5.6 million citizens, 5.6 million Prime Ministers, 5.6 million prophets and Messiahs, each with his or her own personal formula for instant redemption.”

“I know the word compromise has a terrible reputation in English, especially on the West Coast. This is the place of idealists, and they regard compromise as lack of principles, lack of backbone, lack of integrity, lack of devotion, lack of everything. Let me tell you, in my vocabulary, the word compromise is synonymous to the word life itself. And the opposite of compromise is not integrity, and the opposite of compromise is not idealism—the opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death. Where there is life, there is compromise. Compromise, not capitulation.”

Amos Oz, born Amos Klausner, was a novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work examined Israeli culture. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Oxford, Oz served in the Israeli army during three separate stints and joined the Israeli peace movement following the Six-Day War in 1967. It was at this time that he began advocating for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oz’s fiction combines realism with irony, resulting in a critical, unapologetic tone. He credited Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio with his choice to write about his own experiences and point of view. “The written world,” he wrote in his memoir, “always revolves around the hand that is writing, wherever it happens to be writing: where you are is the center of the universe.” Oz published 40 works of fiction and nonfiction, had his work translated into 45 languages, and won literary prizes from around the world. Oz passed away in December, 2018.

]]>Novelist, journalist, and intellectual Amos Oz discusses Israeli literature, Hebrew, the Holocaust, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.Novelist, journalist, and intellectual Amos Oz discusses Israeli literature, Hebrew, the Holocaust, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.Literary Arts1:10:31Jacqueline Woodsonhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jacqueline-woodson/
Wed, 01 May 2019 22:09:54 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=33022https://literary-arts.org/archive/jacqueline-woodson/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jacqueline-woodson/feed/0<p>Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, discusses writing and her career.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/jacqueline-woodson/">Jacqueline Woodson</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>What is my story, and what is not my story? Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, broaches this question in her 2019 lecture in Portland, Oregon. A highly personable and conversational Woodson discusses how her passion for writing began and grew from a young age. Through recollections from her own life and stories from her family’s history, she shares how her past has shaped her writing craft and career. Woodson recites excerpts from a selection of her works—including her Newbery Honor-winning picture book, Show Way, and her National Book Award-winning memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming—and speaks to the importance of gathering people together to have tough conversations in an increasingly polarized world.

One thing that’s so great about literature is that it is a way of getting people together and gathering around a narrative—or gathering around a writer—to have conversations that we might not otherwise have had.”

“A long time ago, I realized I was no longer writing for Jacqueline Woodson. I was writing for the people who had historically not seen themselves in literature, and for the people who were too scared to make that leap and meet someone outside of their own existences.”

“This is what living is and what writing realistic fiction is, right? It’s the highs and lows of our every day. It’s the stuff that makes us laugh, and it’s the stuff that makes us cry. It’s the stuff that makes us think, and it’s the stuff that we sometimes don’t want to think about.”

“Life is too short to finish a book you don’t love.”

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Honor Award. She is also the author of New York Times bestselling novel Another Brooklyn, which was a 2016 National Book Award Finalist and Woodson’s first adult novel in twenty years. In 2015, Woodson was named Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Most recently, she was named the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. Woodson’s latest book is Harbor Me and the picture book The Day You Begin, both published in 2018. In 2019, she will publish Red at the Bone.

]]>Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, discusses writing and her career.Jacqueline Woodson, acclaimed author of more than two dozen award-winning books for children and young adults, discusses writing and her career.Literary Arts52:17Al Gorehttps://literary-arts.org/archive/al-gore-2/
Wed, 24 Apr 2019 18:23:52 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=32807https://literary-arts.org/archive/al-gore-2/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/al-gore-2/feed/0<p>Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses climate change as a matter of highest priority for the United States.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/al-gore-2/">Al Gore</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode of The Archive Project, former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses the past, present, and future state of the world in the context of climate change. He supports his argument for the need for societal and policy change with extensive scientific research and discusses the merits of various alternative energy resources. He focuses the latter half of his lecture on emphasizing the need to prepare and assist the next generation with the climate challenges ahead.

It is possible to make the choice to shift away from a source of energy on which we now depend that is dirty, polluting, vulnerable, going to be in short supply, very expensive, and connected to national security concerns to a new source of energy that is based on fuel that is free forever.

Former Vice President Al Gore is the cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis. Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.

He is the author of the #1 New York Times best-sellers An Inconvenient Truth and The Assault on Reason, and the best-sellers Earth in the Balance, Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, and most recently, the New York Times best-seller An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

He is the subject of the documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won two Oscars in 2006 — and a second documentary in 2017, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. In 2007, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”

]]>Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses climate change as a matter of highest priority for the United States.Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore discusses climate change as a matter of highest priority for the United States.Literary Arts1:29:53Mitchell Jackson & Jesmyn Wardhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward/
Wed, 17 Apr 2019 23:44:18 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=32486https://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward/feed/0<p>Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/mitchell-jackson-jesmyn-ward/">Mitchell Jackson & Jesmyn Ward</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Jesmyn Ward is the author of the National Book Award-winning novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir Men We Reaped. Ward is in conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson, Whiting Award-winner, native Portlander, and author of the novel The Residue Years and nonfiction book Survival Math (forthcoming 2019). Both Ward and Jackson address the uncomfortable realities of the black experience in America in their work. In this conversation between real-life friends and colleagues, Ward and Jackson seriously discuss the issues of systemic racism, poverty, and violence that are central to their works. Despite the weight of these topics, the intimacy and comfort between the authors creates a light and even humorous discussion. In this episode, Ward and Jackson invite us not only to think, but to laugh with them as well.

Jesmyn Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner, a MacArthur Genius, and a recipient of the Strauss Living Award. She is the author of Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, Men We Reaped, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, and editor of The Fire This Time. She teaches creative writing at Tulane University.

Whiting Award winner Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from Lannan Foundation, Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, NYFA, and The Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and Tin House. His newest is the nonfiction book Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of writing in Liberal Studies at New York University.

]]>Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency.Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Whiting Award recipient Mitchell Jackson in conversation at the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, sponsored by Literary Arts and Lyceum Agency.Literary Arts55:52Chimamanda Ngozi Adichiehttps://literary-arts.org/archive/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/
Thu, 11 Apr 2019 16:39:42 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=31945https://literary-arts.org/archive/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/feed/0<p>Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, discusses her journey as an author, from her childhood in Nigeria to the present-day. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In March 2019, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined thousands of book-lovers for the culminating lecture of the Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. Starting in January, readers across the county took part in reading and discussing Adichie’s novel Americanah and her book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists. In this episode, Adichie discusses her journey as a writer—from her earliest memories in her hometown of Nsukka, Nigeria to her American college experiences and beyond. Throughout her story, at least one thing is constant: a persistent hunger for and desire to create literature that celebrates the stories of the unsung, to reach a higher, clearer truth through fiction. Adichie is at once an impressive artist and a disarming speaker, imbuing even the sternest of lessons with wit and warmth. Tender and honest, Adichie’s words are sure to resonate with readers, writers, feminists, and dreamers of all ages and persuasions.

A Nigerian-born artist whose influence spans continents and genres, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has received worldwide acclaim as an author, poet, playwright, and speaker. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and her work has been recognized with the O. Henry Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction), and the PEN Pinter Prize, among many other distinctions.

Adichie is the author of three novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah; a short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck; the essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014, based on a widely viewed talk at TEDxEuston in 2012); and Dear Ijeawele, Ora Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

]]>Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, discusses her journey as an author, from her childhood in Nigeria to the present-day.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, discusses her journey as an author, from her childhood in Nigeria to the present-day.Literary Arts53:47Barry Lopezhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-3/
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 00:08:46 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=29213https://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-3/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-3/feed/0<p>National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/barry-lopez-3/">Barry Lopez</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, we hear one of Oregon’s most celebrated authors, Barry Lopez, discuss his latest book of nonfiction called Horizon with Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts. The two discuss the themes behind his book, including the environmental crisis at hand. Pulling from 30 years of lived experience, Horizon defies category. It is not merely travel, science, or nature writing. It is not only a memoir, or a book of natural history. Within the book’s nearly 600 pages, Lopez explores the six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez probes the long history of humanity’s quests and explorations. This work challenges Lopez to answer his own question: “Having seen so many parts of the world, what had I learned about human menace, human triumph, and human failure?” Lopez reads passages from the book while also weaving anecdotes about his decades of fieldwork. He leaves us with an urgent call to take ownership of the health and the future of our world and its inhabitants.

Barry Lopez is the author of Arctic Dreams, for which he received a National Book Award and an Oregon Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist; and eight works of fiction, including Light Action in the Caribbean and Resistance, which also won Oregon Book Awards.

]]>National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez discusses his new book Horizon, during the launch event in Portland, Oregon.Literary Arts1:03:25Verselandia! 2018https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018/
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 23:50:01 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=29205https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018/feed/0<p>Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/verselandia-2018/">Verselandia! 2018</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode of The Archive Project, we celebrate Portland’s creative youth during the seventh annual Verselandia! poetry slam. This city-wide event features students from Parkrose, Roosevelt, Metropolitan Learning Center, Benson, Lincoln, Gresham, Sam Barlow, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, Jefferson, Grant, and Cleveland high schools competing for poetic glory. Verselandia! is the Grand Slam for the winners from individual school slams hosted by public high school library media specialists. This episode features a small selection of performances from the 2018 competition, emceed by Portland’s own Anis Mojgani.

Anis Mojgani is the author of five books of poetry. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in journals Bat City Review, Rattle, Buzzfeed Reader, Thrush, and Forklift Ohio, amongst others. A two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis has done commissioned work for the Getty Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Portland Timbers, and has been awarded artist residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, AIR Serenbe, and the Bloedel Nature Reserve. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Portland, OR, where he serves on the Board of Directors for Literary Arts. His latest book is In the Pockets of Small Gods. Visit him online at thepianofarm.com.

]]>Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.Students who participated in the 2018 Verselandia! City-wide Youth Poetry Competition share their original pieces in front of a live audience, emceed by poet Anis Mojgani.Literary Arts50:38W.S. Merwinhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin/
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 22:35:03 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=29139https://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin/feed/0<p>W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/w-s-merwin/">W.S. Merwin</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, we honor two-time United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner W.S. Merwin. In November of 2008, Merwin joined Literary Arts downtown in the Newmark Theatre for an intimate Q&A session, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration. The collection features a combination of new poems and selected favorites from the course of his lengthy and prolific career. In a New York Times review of the book, Don Chiasson wrote that Merwin’s poetry “implies something above or below ordinary speech: the hum of deep interiority, a chorus of ancestral voices, the music of the spheres.” It was Merwin’s ability to blend this kind of secular spirituality with the political that made him much beloved among literary lovers and critics alike. His keen ear for language allowed him to epitomize and transcend the issues he tackled, among them the Vietnam War and environmentalism, with heart-wrenching elegance. Merwin’s passion for the environment in particular colored his later work. When asked about the role of the poet in society, Merwin replied, “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you?”

After over a half-century of award-winning literary and civic contributions, W.S. Merwin passed away on March 15, 2019, at the age of 91.

Born September 30, 1927, in New York City, William Stanley Merwin was the son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five. He was raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and attended Princeton University on a scholarship. As a young man, Merwin went to Europe and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal to a more distinctly American voice. Merwin was perhaps the most highly decorated poet in American history, with two Pulitzer Prizes, and National Book Award, and two terms as United States Poet Laureate, among many other honors. As the Atlantic Monthly says, “The intentions of Merwin’s poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.”

He lived in Majorca, London, France and Mexico and several places in the United States, including Boston and New York. In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, a Zen Buddhist teacher. He married Paula Dunaway, in 1983, and settled on Maui. For nearly 30 years, they lived in a home that he designed and helped build, surrounded by acres of land once devastated and depleted from years of erosion, logging, and toxic agricultural practices. Merwin painstakingly restored the land into one of the most comprehensive palm forests in the world. He passed away on March 15 in his home at the age of 91. [Bio courtesy of merwinconservancy.org]

]]>W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration.W.S. Merwin, acclaimed, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, answers questions in Portland’s Newmark Theatre, followed by a reading from his 2005 National Book Award-winning collection, Migration.Literary Arts55:35Jennifer Eganhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan/
Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:08:37 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=29083https://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan/feed/0<p>In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/jennifer-egan/">Jennifer Egan</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan joins us in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for a lecture on the journey to her New York Times best seller Manhattan Beach. In her own words, Egan takes us through her research process for the novel—from the initial spark of intrigue and inspiration, through the many stories she uncovered along the way, and finally to the relationships she was able to foster and channel into the final product.

About the book: Manhattan Beach (2017) is set in a World War II–era New York City populated by gangsters, sailors, bankers, union men, and the divers of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The novel tells the haunting and propulsive intertwined stories of heroine Anna Kerrigan, the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s only female diver, her father Eddie Kerrigan, who works for both the union and the mob, and nightclub owner Dexter Styles, Eddie’s complex and charismatic boss. Egan has said of writing Manhattan Beach: “It was incredibly fun to just go there with this stuff, in the manner of Robinson Crusoe or Mutiny on the Bounty, these stories that I loved as a kid. It was just incredibly fun to write a shipwreck, and a survival-at-sea story about mobsters trying to kill each other. That felt different.” The book was awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Jennifer Egan is the author of Manhattan Beach, the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Of her writing, George Saunders has said: “To see the world through Egan’s eyes is to be moved, through language, to new adoration of the world. I don’t know a better writer working today. There is a generosity in her prose that is vastly enlivening to its reader and brings about that beautiful effect fiction sometimes causes: more, and better-grounded, fondness for reality, just as it is.” For more information on this speaker, please visit prhspeakers.com

]]>In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.In this episode, Jennifer Egan discusses her process for researching her most recent novel Manhattan Beach and the many inspiring people and places she discovered along the way.Literary Arts52:00The Believer at Portland Book Festival 2018https://literary-arts.org/archive/the-believer-at-portland-book-festival-2018/
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 22:55:45 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=29018https://literary-arts.org/archive/the-believer-at-portland-book-festival-2018/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/the-believer-at-portland-book-festival-2018/feed/0<p>This special episode of The Archive Project features three micro-interviews conducted by The Believer at Portland Book Festival 2018. Authors featured in this episode include Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) and Meaghan O’Connell (And Now We Have Everything) in conversation with Believer editor-in-chief Joshua Wolf Shenk; Ali Fitzgerald (Drawn to Berlin) and Jason Lutes (Berlin) in conversation with Portland cartoonist and educator Jonathan Hill; and Tommy Orange (There There) in conversation with Sara Ortiz.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/the-believer-at-portland-book-festival-2018/">The Believer at Portland Book Festival 2018</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single micro-interview at Portland Book Festival 2018, in partnership with The Believer magazine. The first featurette puts The Believer’s Sara Ortiz in conversation with Tommy Orange, author of critically acclaimed debut novel There There, which follows the struggles of Oakland Indians as their lives converge at a local powwow. In the second micro-interview, moderated by local artist Jonathan Hill, graphic artists Ali Fitzgerald (Drawn to Berlin) and Jason Lutes (Berlin) delve into the relationships we have with places we move to or have left behind. What is the connection between place, time, and borders? And what obligations do we have to homes both old and new? For the finale in this micro-interview triptych, Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) and Meaghan O’Connell (And Now We Have Everything) discuss the fluidity of nonfiction—the process of taking from the past and crossing into the present. How much truth does one share, and what details, if anything, are sacred and private?

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor-at-large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, and Guernica, among others. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Find him online at alexanderchee.net.

Ali Fitzgerald is a comic artist and writer living in Berlin. Her most recent book is Drawn to Berlin. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and recently began a monthly satirical comic there about America. She has also contributed comics to New York Magazine’s The Cut, Modern Painters, The New York Times, Art-Das Kunst Magazine and Greenpeace Magazine. She wrote and drew the popular webcomic “Hungover Bear and Friends” for McSweeney’s from 2013 to 2016. Visit her online at alifitzgerald.net.

Jonathan Hill is an Ignatz-nominated cartoonist, illustrator, and educator living in Portland, OR. He currently teaches comics at PNCA and OCAC, and serves on the Literary Arts Board of Directors. As an illustrator and cartoonist, some of his clients include the Willamette Week, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, The Believer magazine, and Powell’s City of Books. He is currently working on two graphic novels, Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology, and Climate and his first solo graphic novel, The Searchers. Visit him online at oneofthejohns.com.

Jason Lutes was born in New Jersey in 1967 and grew up reading American superhero and Western comics. He is the creator of comic book series Berlin. In the late 1970s, he discovered Heavy Metal magazine and the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, both of which proved major influences on his creative development. Lutes graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in illustration, and in 1993 he began drawing a weekly comics page called Jar of Fools for Seattle’s The Stranger. Lutes lives in Vermont with his partner and two children, where he teaches comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Meaghan O’Connell is a freelance writer whose most recent work has appeared on Longreads and New York Magazine’s The Cut. From 2013–2015 she co-edited the personal finance website The Billfold, and before that worked in the tech industry. Her first book, And Now We Have Everything, is out now from Little, Brown. She lives with her family in Portland, OR. Find her online at meaghano.com.

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California. There There is his debut novel.

Sara Ortiz is the program manager of The Believer magazine and Black Mountain Institute. Daughter to Salvadoran immigrants, Ortiz strives to cultivate cultural and creative programming that offers a platform to amplify underrepresented voices. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the Texas Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. An Austin native, Ortiz currently serves as a member in the 2019 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Committee.

Joshua Wolf Shenk is an essayist, and arts leader. He is artistic and executive director of the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV and editor-in-chief of The Believer magazine. Josh’s books include Lincoln’s Melancholy, named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times andThe Washington Post; and national bestseller, Powers of Two: How Relationships Drive Creativity. He’s published in Harper’s, The New Yorker,the New York Times, GQ, The Nation. He splits his time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where he fathers an eight-year-old boy who, like Josh, has webbed toes. Find Josh online at shenk.net.

]]>This special episode of The Archive Project features three micro-interviews conducted by The Believer at Portland Book Festival 2018. Authors featured in this episode include Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) and Meaghan O’Connell...This special episode of The Archive Project features three micro-interviews conducted by The Believer at Portland Book Festival 2018. Authors featured in this episode include Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) and Meaghan O’Connell (And Now We Have Everything) in conversation with Believer editor-in-chief Joshua Wolf Shenk; Ali Fitzgerald (Drawn to Berlin) and Jason Lutes (Berlin) in conversation with Portland cartoonist and educator Jonathan Hill; and Tommy Orange (There There) in conversation with Sara Ortiz.Literary Arts1:00:15Ron Chernow (Rebroadcast)https://literary-arts.org/archive/ron-chernow-rebroadcast/
Thu, 28 Feb 2019 01:32:07 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=28982https://literary-arts.org/archive/ron-chernow-rebroadcast/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/ron-chernow-rebroadcast/feed/0<p>Ron Chernow discusses the life of a biographer, including re-casting familiar historical figures in a new light and a secret bias against those more elusive figures. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/ron-chernow-rebroadcast/">Ron Chernow (Rebroadcast)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>Ron Chernow opens his talk with a discussion on being a biographer—from the perils of picking a subject to debates about how much one should reveal about that subject. Specifically, he discusses his research on the life of John D. Rockefeller for his book Titan (1998) and how it is not unusual when writing a biography to encounter “somebody I had not met in any of the earlier biographies. Here was a man with a beautiful, dry Midwestern wit; somebody with an inexhaustible fund of droll stories; somebody who had a very, very canny sense of people and situations, and certainly had a talent for business analysis that dwarfed anything I met with the Morgans or the Warbergs.”

Ron Chernow is an American writer best known for his prize-winning biographies of historical figures in business, finance, and American politics. His first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1990. He has also won the 1993 George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing, the 2011 American History Book Prize, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award twice. He is also a freelance journalist with over 60 articles appearing in various national publications. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

“Biographers, I think, are all too easily seduced by those people who are expressive, who are demonstrative, and who can be conjured up with that kind of theatrical vividness. I think that we as a breed have a secret bias against the subtle, the elusive, and the reticent, and this is perhaps why I didn’t initially see the potential in doing Rockefeller.”

“In the age of political correctness, you’re able to tell an absolutely filthy joke, and as long as it comes from Mark Twain you’re covered.”

]]>Ron Chernow discusses the life of a biographer, including re-casting familiar historical figures in a new light and a secret bias against those more elusive figures.Ron Chernow discusses the life of a biographer, including re-casting familiar historical figures in a new light and a secret bias against those more elusive figures.Literary Arts52:15Lit Crawl 2018https://literary-arts.org/archive/lit-crawl-2018/
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:01:47 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=28940https://literary-arts.org/archive/lit-crawl-2018/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/lit-crawl-2018/feed/0<p>This special episode of The Archive Project features highlights from Lit Crawl Portland 2018. Authors featured in this episode include poets Nabila Lovelace, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Stacey Tran; writers Benjamin Soileau and Erica Trabold accompanied by music from Dustin Spillman and Adam Trabold (respectively); and Native writers Ed Edmo, Laura Da’, Trevino L. Brings Plenty. This episode is broken up into three segments, each corresponding to a single Lit Crawl event.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/lit-crawl-2018/">Lit Crawl 2018</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>This special episode of The Archive Project is broken up into three sections, each corresponding to a single event during Lit Crawl Portland 2018. Lit Crawl is an eclectic mix of literary events staged in nontraditional locations. From poetry readings in bars to literary trivia and karaoke in hotel lobbies, Lit Crawl seeks to unite readers and writers in a single night jam-packed with literary fun. The first segment features a reading titled “Our Voices are a Bridge” cohosted by The Rumpus, VIDA, and YesYes Books, and showcases poets Nabila Lovelace, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Stacey Tran. In the second segment, “OPPOSSUM: A Literary Caberet!”, writer Benjamin Soileau performs with musician Dustin Spillman, followed by a reading from writer Erica Trabold accompanied by musician Adam Trabold. And in the final segment, tribal elder and poet Ed Edmo of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe formally and fully recognizes the Portland area’s indigenous people in this first-ever Land Acknowledgement for Lit Crawl Portland and Portland Book Festival. Edmo was joined in the reading by indigenous poets Laura Da’ of the Eastern Shawnee and Trevino L. Brings Plenty of the Lakota.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty is a poet and musician who lives, works, and writes in Portland, OR. He is singer/songwriter/guitarist for the musical ensemble Ballads of Larry Drake. Trevino is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. His works include Wakpá Wanáǧi, Ghost River (2015); Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2012); Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (2008).

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, was published by the University of Arizona Press and won a 2016 American Book Award. In 2015, Da’ was both a Made at Hugo House Fellow and a Jack Straw Fellow. Her newest book is Instruments of the True Measure. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.

Ed Edmo is a Shoshone-Bannock poet, playwright, performer, traditional storyteller, tour guide, and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture; and he served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his family.

Nabila Lovelace is a born and raised Queens native, as well as a first generation American. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative Northeast, Washington Square Review, Day One, ESPNW, and Vinyl. She is co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festival. In her debut collection, Sons of Achilles, Nabila Lovelace attempts to examine the liminal space between violence and intimacy.

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. She is an MFA graduate of Portland State University with a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Portland with her two children. Mother Winter is her first book.

Benjamin Soileau is from south Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Grist, Opossum, Louisiana Literature, Bayou, and many other journals. His story won the 2018 Rumble Fish Quarterly New Year’s Writing Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He stages homes in Olympia, Washington. Reach him at bsoile2@gmail.com.

Adam Trabold is a designer currently living in Oregon with his wife Erica and their two cats, Ewok & Coco (yes, their names fit their personalities). Adam is obsessed with human-centered design, and gets excited about new technology, great records, and storytelling. His spare time is spent writing music with his band Adelaide, playing with digital synthesizers and analog electronics, and with his wife exploring the West Coast.

Erica Trabold is a Nebraska-born essayist. Her lyric essays appear in The Rumpus, Passages North, The Collagist, South Dakota Review, Seneca Review, Essay Daily, and elsewhere. A graduate of Oregon State University’s MFA program and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Erica writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon.

Stacey Tran is a writer from Portland, OR. She is the creator of Tender Table, a storytelling series about food, family, and identity. She is a member of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of writers and artists of the Vietnamese diaspora. Her writing can be found in BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and diaCRITICS. She is the author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018; Black Ocean, 2019). She currently lives in Providence, RI.

]]>This special episode of The Archive Project features highlights from Lit Crawl Portland 2018. Authors featured in this episode include poets Nabila Lovelace, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Stacey Tran; writers Benjamin Soileau and Erica Trabold accompanied by m...This special episode of The Archive Project features highlights from Lit Crawl Portland 2018. Authors featured in this episode include poets Nabila Lovelace, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Stacey Tran; writers Benjamin Soileau and Erica Trabold accompanied by music from Dustin Spillman and Adam Trabold (respectively); and Native writers Ed Edmo, Laura Da’, Trevino L. Brings Plenty. This episode is broken up into three segments, each corresponding to a single Lit Crawl event.Literary Arts55:49Martín Espadahttps://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada/
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 20:28:46 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=28896https://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada/feed/0<p>Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. </p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/martin-espada/">Martín Espada</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this episode of The Archive Project, American Book Award winning poet Martín Espada discusses his then most poetry collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen. In this, his sixth collection, Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the “Mayan astronomer” calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda. In many ways, the collection mirrors Espada’s own career: a winding, fascinating journey punctuated by episodes that on their surface could not appear to have less in common. Espada has worn many hats—civil rights lawyer, teacher, poet—and this is evident in the various people, places, and themes his work tackles.

As a courtesy, we warn that this episode contains sometimes graphic descriptions of violence and racism, and may not be suitable for all audiences.

​Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published almost twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest collection of poems from Norton is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). Other books of poems include The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (2000), Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993) and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (1990). His many honors include the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, an American Book Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona, and has been issued in a new edition by Northwestern University Press. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

]]>Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen.Poet and social justice advocate Martín Espada discusses his then most recent collection, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen.Literary Arts56:26Tayari Joneshttps://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones/
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 02:07:23 +0000https://literary-arts.org/?post_type=needmore_archive&p=28846https://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones/#respondhttps://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones/feed/0<p>Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org/archive/tayari-jones/">Tayari Jones</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://literary-arts.org">Literary Arts</a>.</p>In this humorous and personal lecture, author Tayari Jones discusses her complex journey to literary success, and her newest novel, An American Marriage. She describes the path her career has taken, from childhood to university and beyond, in which she’s made decisions to pursue writing despite receiving varying levels of support from educators, family, and the publishing industry. She finishes the talk by sharing a short selection from An American Marriage.

An American Marriage is a stirring love story and a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. A masterpiece of storytelling, it’s an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

“For me, the novel lives in the place of moral ambiguity. And moral ambiguity happens when there’s a conflict and the people don’t agree, but nobody’s wrong.”

“I got all the way to about fifty pages from the end, and I hit a wall. I couldn’t figure out how to end the book. It was stressful. It was as though me and this book were in a relationship in New York City…we had broken up, but we couldn’t afford to move out. I felt like the book was sleeping on my couch. I would wake up in the morning: there’s the book. It’s not speaking to me, I’m not speaking to it. I can’t bring any new books home because this book is on my couch. And it went like this for a year.”

New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, the New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

]]>Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.Author Tayari Jones discusses her newest novel An American Marriage, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well her complex journey to literary success.Literary Arts49:07